Sad Story with Happy Ending

Had two incubators going with 28 eggs between the two. One incubator is a LG and the other a Brower TopHatch. Candled the eggs just before Lockdown and got rid of 7 eggs that were not fertile. That let 10 eggs in the LG and 11 in the TopHatch. The TopHatch was suppose to start hatching on December 2nd and the LG on December 3rd. Everything was going just as planned, so I thought. The TopHatch all the eggs in it hatched out except one that turned out to be a Double Yoke. I knew the egg was a lot bigger than the rest but did not know it was a DY, to say the least it did not Hatch. But when I opened it up there was a little black chick that had started to develop. Now to the sad part of the story. Friday morning I checked the LG to see what was going on with the eggs in it. Two of the eggs where hatching and everything looked fine. I had placed a small bowl of water in the LG incubator at lockdown to help with the humidity and I thought that there was enough water in the slots in the bottom of the incubator. Well when I got home from work there were two little chicks in the incubator and some of the eggs had started to pip. I could see the shells were starting to crack open. Then I looked at the humidity gauge and it only showed 20%. Oh I was sick thinking that I had made such a big mistake and not added enough water to keep the humidity up high enough. I knew that the last eight eggs where not going to hatch on their own. I could hear the chicks inside the eggs. So, I decided to start helping them out. I had read all the posting about not helping them out, but they were going to die no matter if I did or I didn't. Now this is where the Happy part comes in. I started cracking the shell on one of the eggs and could see that the membrane was as dry as it could be. I then started looking around the house for a way to wet the membrane without harming the chick. I ended up getting a cup of very warm water and a 1" sponge paint brush that I used to wet the membrane. It worked!! I then began to slowly work the membrane off the chick by rubbing the wet sponge bush over the membrane peeling it back away from the chick . Once the chick was free of the shell and the membrane, I placed it back in the incubator to dry. I did this to six of the eggs and left the last two in the incubator that had not piped their shells yet thinking that they may hatch on there own, I had add water to the LG. The 6 that I helped looked like they were going to die. They just laid flat in the incubator. I left them along and went to bed wondering what I would find in the morning. Well all of them lived and are still doing well. They look just as healthy as the chicks that hatch on their own. The two that I left did not hatch. One was dead in the shell when I opened it up and the other smelled like it was rotten when I open it. What a smell!!

I can't start hatching until I get my flock separated in breeding pen, then I have to wait a month, and then I have to make sure my brooder house is finished and ready, and then I have to sneak all the eggs into the bator so my husband doesn't know what I am up to!!

Plus this time of year it is so dry inside the house with the heat running all the time. Just sucks the humidity right out of the air. I will be more careful next time I hatch eggs in the LG. Setting it up now to hatch a couple dz Marans.